The field of optical corrections or adaptive optical systems has been extensively developed. One such system is that disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,727,621, which shows a system in which an input wavefront is sensed to determine distortions in the wavefront and the sensed signals are converted to control signals on a deformable mirror that reflects the same input wavefront to provide corrections to the measured distortions.
A common problem in systems of this type is the necessity to do calculations over the entire aperture in real time, which imposes extreme demands on the computational equipment being used.
An application of these systems that has not previously been solved or attempted is that of taking pictures from an aircraft. Since an airplane moves at high speed through a turbulent atmosphere, it is very difficult both to measure the turbulence that is affecting the image and to correct the turbulence quickly enough so that the image may be corrected before the aircraft has passed the turbulence by.